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T-Cell Editor Creating Powerful Immunotherapy Weapon

As part of a $6 million effort to establish new therapies for high-risk pediatric liver cancer, Navin Varadarajan, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the Cullen College of Engineering, will modify T cells to recognize and kill glypican-3, a molecule found in liver cancer cells.

For 10 weeks over the summer, undergraduate students from across the U.S. became bonafide engineering researchers, working alongside some of UH Cullen College’s brightest minds to solve some of the world’s most pressing technical challenges with science and ingenuity.

Rimer: ‘Understanding Formation Process of Zeolites is Key.’

About 20 percent of the electricity produced in the United States of America is generated at nuclear power plants, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). This means residents in one out of every five U.S. homes turn on their lights, use refrigerators and make toast – among other things – using energy generated by nuclear power plants.

Ensuring military forces have up-to-date information about a potentially hostile region offers obvious advantages, but current methods for doing that – especially along shorelines, where underwater mines and other hazards can pose serious risks – all have drawbacks. It is especially difficult if keeping the technology out of enemy hands is a priority.

UH Engineer Says DOE-Funded Work Will Capture Methane, Other Emissions

Thanks to advances in drilling technology, there is enough natural gas in the U.S. to last well into next century and beyond. This has renewed the idea of using inexpensive, domestically produced natural gas as a transportation fuel.

Wins National Award to Further Research

With a perfect score on his research proposal, chemical and biomolecular engineering researcher Mehmet Orman received the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Career Transition Award, meant to help initiate a successful bioengineering career as an independent research scientist. Orman will use the $250,000 prize to investigate cells that are resistant to antibiotics.

A Cullen College of Engineering professor, who is working to improve treatments for battling cancer, received a grant from the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), the organization that funds groundbreaking cancer research and prevention programs in the state.

Most of the 150 million tons of plastics produced around the world every year end up in landfills, the oceans and elsewhere. Less than 9 percent of plastics are recycled in the United States, rising to about 30 percent in Europe.

With a four-year $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), two University of Houston engineering professors are developing a home test kit for kidney nephritis, or inflammation, in patients who have Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

A team of researchers led by a UH chemical and biomolecular engineer will design microorganisms that can convert natural gas liquids (NGLs) into useful products more efficiently than current technologies.

Back in the days when all medicines were made out of chemicals found in nature, manufacturing drugs was somewhat of a breeze.

Take aspirin, for example. The chemical makeup of aspirin is simple; When you look at the drug under a microscope its molecules will all look exactly the same. Aspirin is as easy to characterize as it is to manufacture.

For UH chemical engineer Navin Varadarajan, it isn’t enough to conduct laboratory research, publish papers, earn grants and win awards for his work in immunotherapy, which utilizes the body’s own immune cells to attack tumors.

Two professors at the UH Cullen College of Engineering have discovered that size is critical to the performance of the monolayers of catalysts, the fundamental substance that speeds up reactions in all industries from petrochemical to manufacturing.

UH-Led Team is Developing Next-Generation Catalytic Technology to Cut Emissions

Almost 160 years after the invention of the internal combustion engine, a new type of engine – operating at low-temperature, allowing it to consume less fuel – offers promise for the transportation industry as it plans for the future.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $510,000 to Peter Vekilov, John and Rebecca Moores Professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and chemistry, to conduct the first fundamental work about how the nature of solvents impact the crystallization process.

In 2015 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to Chinese scientist Youyou Tu for her discovery of a novel malaria treatment rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. Tu isolated the drug artemisinin from an herb used to treat malaria in China for more than 2,000 years.

Research underway in a UH Cullen College of Engineering laboratory to make “heavy water” less expensively could soon make nuclear energy safer, eliminating real-life disasters like those that have occurred at the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear power plants.